December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

re: Billy boy's satellites [Was - Floating DataHavens]
by bugs＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > > Vincent Cate wrote: > > You can get Internet via radio links for reasonable prices. And via > > satellite for almost affordable prices. When Bill Gates 900 satellites > > get up there it should be very affordable. > > Gary Howland wrote: > ... if a tad unrealiable? > The thought of 900 satelites in low orbit, all running NT, makes me > shudder. Brings a new meaning to the expression "OS crash". > Its been a little over a year but I had heard that the current design was for a lower number of MEO satellites. I would think that cypherpunks would want to see this happen. The political problems are probably larger than the technical ones :-) Regards, Mark Hittinger Netcom/Dallas bugs(a)netcom.com

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Rubber Hose Algorithm
by gimonca＠skypoint.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's a lot of armchair theorizing on this list about government oppression and such. For comparison purposes, here is a real-life example: ========================================= From: hrwatchnyc(a)igc.org Sent: 15 Agustus 1996 7:00 Subject: Indonesia--Arrest of Lecturer for Internet Communication Human Rights Watch sent the following letter, protesting the arrest of a university lecturer for communicating on the Internet, to the Indonesian government today. August 14, 1996 His Excellency M. Arifin Siregar Ambassador to the United States Embassy of Indonesia 2020 Mass. Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 Your Excellency: I am writing on behalf of Human Rights Watch/Asia to protest the arrest of Drs. Prihadi Beny Waluyo, a lecturer at Duta Wacana Christian University. Drs. Waluyo was arrested at his home by soldiers of the district military command. He was reportedly accused of distributing e-mail messages and also of sending messages relating to the July 27 riots to a destination in Holland. His arrest came after an unidentified person gave an officer photocopies of e-mail messages that were traced to Drs. Waluyo. The person claimed the printouts came from a store in Kebumen, a district of Yogyakarta. Following his arrest, Drs. Waluyo was interrogated by the military about his connections with the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD), which the government has accused of masterminding the riots, but he denied any involvement with the PRD. He acknowledged that he had sent messages over the Internet. Following his questioning, he was reportedly ordered to go to his home and was told to report to the district military command on a regular basis. He is said to be under strict surveillance. Human Rights Watch opposes actions by the Indonesian government to restrict electronic communication. As stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. We believe that such forums provide a truly unique opportunity for people from around the globe to share their views with an international audience. By allowing unrestricted communication, important issues can receive the benefit of serious discussion by the broadest cross-section of society. If the Internet is to achieve its potential to become a global information infrastructure, it is important, at the present moment, to agree to allow its unrestricted development. We urge that Drs. Waluyi and every other citizen be allowed to receive and transmit electronic mail without fear of harassment, intimidation, or arrest. Sincerely, Sidney Jones Executive Director Human Rights Watch/Asia cc: His Excellency Nugroho Wisnumurti, Ambassador to the United Nations Gopher Address://gopher.humanrights.org:5000 Listserv address: To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail message to majordomo(a)igc.apc.org with "subscribe hrw-news" in the body of the message (leave the subject line blank). Human Rights Watch 485 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10017-6104 TEL: 212/972-8400 FAX: 212/972-0905 E-mail: hrwnyc(a)hrw.org 1522 K Street, N.W. Washington D.C. 20005 TEL: 202/371-6592 FAX: 202/371-0124 E-mail: hrwdc(a)hrw.org ========================================= ObCrypto: On the brighter side, some individuals on soc.culture.indonesia have become remailer users. Others have been forging Usenet headers with varying degrees of success.

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Jurisdictionless Distributed Data Havens
by Kevin Stephenson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all of the debate on offshore data havens, I've been thinking of a way to implement a distributed data haven that would not be subject to (hopefully) any local jurisdiction and therefore, would not need to be located in the place of cypherpunks wet dreams ;). If this idea has been mentioned by someone else, I am not aware of it. By distributing the data over several servers (using RAID like striping), compromise of a single or multiple servers (depending on implementation specifics) would not cause a collapse of the data haven. Here is a way such a data haven could be setup: The data is split into multiple parts. Each site is responsible for maintaining only its part. For a client to access a piece of data, he will have to contact a certain number of sites to reconstruct the data. The client could also use some sort of anonymizer service to do the data collection and then do then combining on his local machine. If one site gets shut down by Big Brother, denial of service attack, etc., the other sites either find a new site to replicate the missing part to, or they need to reconstruct the data and re-stripe it for the remaining servers. (Read any networking book with a section on RAID to see what all this means.) Another idea is that the data can be encrypted, and the client pays the key-holder for the key. The key holder would preferably be the content provider and not one of the servers. i.e.: Client finds Bombs R Us and wants to buy pipe bomb instructions. Bombs R Us gets anonymous payment from client for the instructions. Bombs R Us says to client: "collect" page 5 "parts" and use this key to decrypt. In this scheme, using anonymous digital cash, Bombs R Us can remain anonymous with his data publicly available but encrypted. He can pay each of the server maintainers in anonymous digital cash as his expense. Each server cannot (or should not) be held responsible for disseminating bomb making instructions because each server does not *have* the instructions in a complete form (encrypted or otherwise). It would be like someone calling the cops and saying, I placed a box with XXXXX in it at the airport. This in itself is not a threat. XXXXX could be anything, including OJ Simpson's bloody clothes. And if another guy called in and said "pipe bomb" and hung up, this is meaningless also. The reason data striping is better than a simple mirroring network is that no single site contains anything useful in itself for the authorities to use against the server maintainer. (Similar to a remailer network perhaps) An extra feature could be if some major attack was initiated against the data haven, there could be a dead-man button of some sort to make the data vanish altogether by sending distress signals to the other servers (or to at least one server, which could then cascade the signal). The system could either use RAID Level 5 data striping, or some hybrid scheme like this: Site 1 has bits 1 and 5 of data Site 2 has bits 2 and 6 of data Site 3 has bits 3 and 7 of data Site 4 has bits 4 and 8 of data Site 5 has 2 parity bits (1 parity bit per nibble) Site 6 has bits 1, 2, 3, and 4 Site 7 has bits 5, 6, 7, and 8 etc. In this particular scheme, it would take the downing of at least 3 of the 7 servers to prevent data collection. It would also take at least 2 sites worth of data to reconstruct the data into a usable form. As much or as little redundancy as needed can be built into the system. The only time the data is in it's whole is prior to being stripped across the servers, during data recreation and re-striping, and when in the hands of the client. Benefits: * No single site contains any incriminating evidence * Allows for a true "virtual company" to exist, with just a mail-box to receive it's anonymous digital cash payments Problems: * Requires a re-striping of data when the data source is changed * Requires a data regeneration and re-striping when a site goes down and a replacement site can not be found (could possibly use an idle standby server to circumvent this problem) Attacks: * Government sabotages site 1, then watches site 2 for data regeneration before re-striping (Can be thwarted by having data regeneration happening on a randomly picked server) Clarifications: When I say digital cash, I am not referring to Chaum's DigiCash. DigiCash will never work in my book because it requires an account, amongst other reasons. YMMV. Comments welcome. Kevin Stephenson -Silence is Security WWIIish Poster

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Re: [NOISE] "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 14 Aug 1996 22:24:39 -0400 (EDT) > From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> > Subject: Re: [NOISE] "X-Ray Gun" for imperceptible searches > > Correct. No warrant is required to observe that which is freely collected > after eminating from the residence of another and observed off his > property. > > Same concept applies to the "sniff" test and ariel views into greenhouses. Pitty somebody doesn't bring a suite against the FCC under this logic. It would particularly impact radar detectors, cell phones, and other types of scanners. Jim Choate

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Re: Anguilla - A DataHaven?
by William Knowles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 15 Aug 1996, Arun Mehta wrote: > I'm sure this has come up before, but what would prevent a server > being located on a buoy or something at sea outside territorial > limits (or when satellites become cheaper, on a satellite itself) > offering such services? Something that I thought would make an excellent data haven would be older offshore oil platforms, Their size would allow extended living periods, electrcity and communications are in place, They are generally built outside of the territorial waters of most countries to avoid any damage to the shorelines if oil spilled (possibility for becoming its own country?) and with the hoops that Shell Oil went through to please Greenpeace with its last oil platform. You have to wonder how cheap these could sell for just to get them off the oil companies hands? Comments or suggestions? William Knowles erehwon(a)c2.org -- William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.org> PGP mail welcome & prefered / KeyID 1024/2C34BCF9 PGP Fingerprint 55 0C 78 3C C9 C4 44 DE 5A 3C B4 60 9C 00 FB BD Finger for public key -- Vote for Harry Browne in November -- http://www.HarryBrowne96.org

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[NOISE] Re: Stopped Clock. Was: Schlafly on Crypto
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>>Subject: Clinton Is Trying to be Big Brother -- Phyllis Schlafly Column 8/8/96 >>It makes me ill to agree with Schlafly on any issue, but >>'Even a stopped clock....... >>Unrepentant Liberial > >It does seem really odd, doesn't it? But look at it this way: The only >reason the knuckle-dragging conservatives are able to take the moral >high-ground on this and other net-freedom issues is because the OTHER >"unrependant liberals" have inexplicably abandoned the correct side of the >argument. The fact that the conservatives are right may seem odd, but the >behavior of the liberals is truly astonishing. Liberals? What Liberals? Clinton's certainly no liberal; he's just a big-spending statist who likes to buy votes from poor, middle-class, and yuppie voters rather than buying them from defense contractors, not that he's above that. The only thing about him that's more liberal than George Bush, whose Clipper chips and miscellaneous wars Clinton inherited, is that Clinton smiles when he's lying instead of sneering like Bush. (If Clinton had said things like "Of course I tried to avoid the draft and smoked dope, I'm no fool" and had dropped the draft and the Drug War instead of supporting both after he was President, I might have a better opinion of him....) However, if Phyllis Schlafly understands that the tools she needs to protect her speech are the same that people she disapproves of can use to protect their speech, and is willing to make that trade, she's starting to inhale, and good for her! # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Reassign Authority!

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(NOISE) Re: Free Pronto Secure Offer
by geoff＠commtouch.co.il 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: unicorn(a)schloss.li, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Fri Aug 16 02:41:34 1996 Unicorn, > No, I was merely pointing out that if the review revealed that it > had problems (one assumed that the intent of peer review is to reveal > such problems in the first place, but perhaps you just like giving > software away?) then the offered reward was valueless. Peer review seems to have voted that their risk paid off. > A lot of people use DES on this list too I'll wager. and... > I "tried out" your promotional scheme when I read your message, and > it was that scheme which my opinion targeted. You misinterpreted my reply to a list member's enquiry about whether our offer of Pronto Secure in exchange for feedback was still available. > This is a subjective question. Yes. > Cypherpunks is always getting the cash poor developer who thinks he > very clever because he has to pay testers no money if he offers his > new product free to the person who discovers a flaw, or writes a > review. Unicorn, you are again letting your fingers move faster than your brain. On what do you base your evaluation of our liquidity ? (not that it is relevant). Most Cypherpunks are technically savvy and crypto aware people, they provide a perfect community for evaluating and debugging a security enabling product. I would strongly recommend this route to any developer of serious security enhancing software. My sincere thanks to all c'punks who have and continue to provide incredibly valuable input into Pronto Secure. > From your home page, I would guess that you request that reviewers > allow you to make their comments public. That's called an > endorsement, and, by the way, people are usually paid for them. > Sometimes in the millions. Think Michael Jordan is getting a deal > when you use his name to promote your product and then give him a > $99.00 piece of software (which is effectively worth the amount of > time it takes to write a few kiss ass paragraphs on the software, not > $99.00)? Unicorn, you are again making groundless assumptions. I suggest that you do some fence painting before you enlighten us with your opinions about our "kiss ass paragraphs" of code. Unless Michael Jordon is reading Schneier on the sly, his endorsement of Pronto secure is not worth 99c. > Alturisim is a pipe dream. Depends what you are putting in your pipe :) I venture that most c'punks would agree that moving strong e-mail security into mainstream is a good thing. This is not going to happen without people making money from it. >> Unicorn, you are invited to whitewash my fence :) > Do I have to review pronto secure first? Yes. Geoff. - --------------------------------------------------------------- Geoff Klein, Pronto Secure Product Manager; www.commtouch.com My PGP public Key 1814AD45 can be obtained by sending a message to geoff(a)commtouch.co.il with "Get PGP Key" as the subject. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMhO1s0Lv5OMYFK1FAQG5WAP/XoLteaVpdhnLpj/pk/1aPiWX7Nx/h1cc 5Sf0mgOWv3Q9MASWHV2lKrgqF9jc15ZaymfJZDq1duGttrPj6SJqX/nwOTcYi006 Hh3qh+LnXWnBd7QA/mZL5Fn4SLAOBno/uspqwMbM+6DCw39MpCY2NG0jQ2Qi8vMH n1IG+PYYTAs= =5HnW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: remailers/kiddie porn
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>"The Internet is like heaven for the pedophile," said Toby Tyler, >a United States police officer who lectures at the FBI Academy on child abuse. ... >However computer experts agree the existence of just one re-mailing system in a country with more lax laws is enough for the global distribution of child >pornography on the Internet. >Tyler said the most widely used re-mailing system currently operates from Finland, through which about 99 percent of all child pornography with untraceable >address codes passes. Classic governmental statistics abuse. Given that probably far over 99% of all untraceable remailer return addresses are on Penet, it's no surprise that 99% of all material with untraceable destination addresses goes through there... The largest userid number I've seen on Penet was about 500,000, and I doubt there are 5000 addresses on nymservers or reply-block users. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: Protecting floating datahavens?
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: William Knowles <erehwon(a)c2.org> > Now I don't claim to be a naval defence expert, But from what > I do read of the dogeared copies of Jane's Defence Weekly, > Would be to install three or four Phalanx Close-In Weapons For those interested in todays piracty I recomment "Outlaws of the Ocean" by G.O.W. Mueller and Freda Adler. The main types of ocean outlaws: 1) Smuggling (freon, dugs "square groupers" - bales of pot, ...) 2) Immigration (illegal immigration can be very profitable) 3) Insurance Fraud (tanker sinks, but unknow to the insurance company the oil had already been offloaded...) 4) Violent crime - what I think of as piracy Piracy is not a victimless crime. Since there are victims, there is someone to shoot at the pirates. Makes it a tough business and not as profitable as, some others. Most piracy occures in "known dangerous areas". Other piracy is drug dealers taking very fast boat so they have an unregistered boat. There were some stories about freighters being attacked in one area, but once they started all carrying guns, the attacks ended. After reading this my impression was that the odds of car-jacking or mugging inside the USA were higher than the odds of a cruising boat getting attacked by pirates. Pirates are going to pick what looks to them like easy targets. A Phalanx or two on the side of a large boat would not look like an easy target. :-) In fact, just one semi-automatic mounted on the side would probably prevent all attacks by pirates. -- Vince ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Vincent Cate vince(a)offshore.com.ai http://www.offshore.com.ai/vince/ Offshore Information Services http://www.offshore.com.ai/

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signoff cypherpunks
by Arnauld Dravet 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

signoff cypherpunks

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